[StarvingLion]

Suicidal already bankrupt governments are now placing huge additional taxes on oil (even in Alberta) plus the "renewables" (including nuclear) craze means the liquid fuels catastrophe is guaranteed by 2019.

Saudi Arabia will blowup which will blowup all of Europe which will...

ALL CITIES ON FIRE BECAUSE THERE IS NO DIESEL/GAS TO MAINTAIN ORDER

The hordes of useless electrical engineers/programmers outnumber fossil related engineers by at least 10000 to 1. 10's of trillions of bad student loans in that group alone. Every one of those fools believes mass electrification can almost entirely replace fossils...they are like the crystalline entity in Star Trek.

Nobody in the oil business will invest with ELECTRIFICATION MORONS INC. in political control determined to flood the world with negatively priced electricity for EV users only (see nissan leaf owners getting free charges already) and sending the bill to FF users. Thats the only way the EV sales can go exponential - FREE JUICE.

Now we know the real reason why Saudi Arabia is going nuts pumping oil.

The 13th Century is at max 4 years away.

[onlooker]

Yes it is fair to say that the more extreme effects of Peak Oil are just around the corner.

[Tanada]

Yes it is fair to say that the more extreme effects of Peak Oil are just around the corner.

From time to time I have bought into this statement hook line and sinker, however I have been hearing and often repeating it since 1982. After a while I had to admit to myself in my more honest moments that 'right around the corner' has too many variables for me to actually make a scientific estimate. Since I reached this conclusion around 2010 I treat it as a game, will it be this year? Next year? When will the world actually enter undeniable terminal decline in world oil supply?

The truth is, someday we will be there, perhaps even today. But we won't know in the scientific sense until at least five years post peak, and possibly as much as ten. To confirm we are post peak a couple things have to be proven, A) everyone who can pump is pumping as hard as they can and B) the oil supply is distributed by price of the marginal barrel, IOW everyone pays the same price as that last marginal barrel of oil at some very high price, or C) the world economy is burning every barrel the world can produce at a price just below recession/depression causing levels and there is not enough oil to meet demand.

B) and C) are kind of an either or proposition, either the world economy is going broke because oil costs so much most can not afford it, or the economy stumbles along but even with everyone pumping flat out there is a shortage of supply.

[onlooker]

Very good points T, as Monte and others like to point out Peak will manifest itself in economic troubles. I think this combination of a turn to LTO-Unconventional Oil along with a definite slowdown in demand, I believe signals a step change along the downward slope. Of course other things factor into the health of the economy. One must also acknowledge that all this new debt to prop up Tar and Shale will be an extra drag on the economy going forward. So in my estimation signs exist of peak oil economic perturbations. Right now we seem to be on stuck in a hybrid of your B and C options. The world seems to be flat out pumping trying to lower price to boost demand which seems to have frozen after the shocks of 2008. This condition can be the precursor of a spike in prices as demand picks up while supply lags.

[Paulo1]

Totally agree with Tanada on this. I too am simply waiting to see what unfolds. I believe it will be soon, but do not accept it will be cataclysmic at first. I think there will be some head scratching and attempts to explain it all away for a good while, and that a Greer decline is more likely. Each day that seems relatively normal is a day to make something better for you and your family to rely upon. Plus, despite the economic ups and downs we live in a remarkable time. We should enjoy it while we can, and I don't mean some hedonistic consumption campaign, but just enjoy the relative peace, calm, and plenty.

[Tanada]

Very good points T, as Monte and others like to point out Peak will manifest itself in economic troubles. I think this combination of a turn to LTO-Unconventional Oil along with a definite slowdown in demand, I believe signals a step change along the downward slope. Of course other things factor into the health of the economy. One must also acknowledge that all this new debt to prop up Tar and Shale will be an extra drag on the economy going forward. So in my estimation signs exist of peak oil economic perturbations. Right now we seem to be on stuck in a hybrid of your B and C options. The world seems to be flat out pumping trying to lower price to boost demand which seems to have frozen after the shocks of 2008. This condition can be the precursor of a spike in prices as demand picks up while supply lags.

People keep repeating this meme that world oil demand is flat as if it were a verified fact. However much people repeat it however will not change the fact that world oil consumption is over 4 MILLION bbl/d higher today than it was in 2008. You can say it is biofuels and other things all you want, but whatever that liquid fuel is the fact is we burn much more of it today than we did when President Obama took office.

[GHung]

Totally agree with Tanada on this. I too am simply waiting to see what unfolds. I believe it will be soon, but do not accept it will be cataclysmic at first. I think there will be some head scratching and attempts to explain it all away for a good while, and that a Greer decline is more likely. Each day that seems relatively normal is a day to make something better for you and your family to rely upon. Plus, despite the economic ups and downs we live in a remarkable time. We should enjoy it while we can, and I don't mean some hedonistic consumption campaign, but just enjoy the relative peace, calm, and plenty.

I'm generally in agreement, excepting that I think Greer tends to discount black swans and inflection points. My take is that he posits that the fractal nature of modern systems means collapse will be distributed and incremental, but I'm not so sure. Many of our inter-reliant systems are gradually becoming hollowed out and fragile, and I've considered that cascading failures are quite possible (likely?) at some point.

A dramatic and swift climate shift, some major natural event, even nuclear war, and all bets are off. Global supply chains are particularly vulnerable. It's clear that peak oil, indeed, "peak everything", is gradually degrading our ability to respond to things, and the signs are there if one looks. The number of failed states grows decade by decade; refugee crises on the increase; population continues to rise while the planet's ability to support those populations is declining rapidly, climate change not withstanding. All-the-while, many populations are becoming increasingly deluded, divided, and angry, while political impotence is reaching high levels. Our nature is to discount these things as they occur, and situational awareness sucks, for the most part. People have lives to live, after all. No point in letting cognitive dissonance interfere with that.

One has to consider that, at some point, something big has got to give. When it does, does pretty much everything global fall apart?

[noobtube]

Unlike the old fogeys who jumped the gun back in the early 80s, I knew there was a whole lot more gas left in the tank.

This time, in 2016, it is clear, the tank is running down to E for the economic engine that is BAU.

Posioned water, thinly disguised oil wars, immigration hysteria, empty suit candidates, stock market AND bond bubbles, expensive & bad food, almost total dependence on a Chinese industrial economy, exploding college/CC debt, crashing oil sector, dead malls & mass closures of stores, crumbling infrastructure, and so much more...

The collapse is happening now.

Of course, you won't know it until YOUR belly is grumbling. But for millions of people in the United States, that is a typical day.

Get ready for the next leg down the slope.

[onlooker]

Tanada this is a quote from Monte "In the EIA’s 2000 Energy Outlook, based upon historical trends, they projected oil demand in 2010 would be 96 mbpd and 115 mbpd in 2020. We are only consuming 94 mbpd in 2016. Had not the 2008 financial collapse occurred, would we be producing enough oil to meet demand? Even with the fracking boom and OPEC pumping flat out, we are only producing 96.5 mbpd, barely enough to have met projected demand in 2010, sixteen years ago." So, while overall demand has increased it has NOT increased as would be expected from historical trends. So that is in essence demand destruction.

[Tanada]

Tanada this is a quote from Monte "In the EIA’s 2000 Energy Outlook, based upon historical trends, they projected oil demand in 2010 would be 96 mbpd and 115 mbpd in 2020. We are only consuming 94 mbpd in 2016. Had not the 2008 financial collapse occurred, would we be producing enough oil to meet demand? Even with the fracking boom and OPEC pumping flat out, we are only producing 96.5 mbpd, barely enough to have met projected demand in 2010, sixteen years ago." So, while overall demand has increased it has NOT increased as would be expected from historical trends. So that is in essence demand destruction.

MQ and I have disagreed about many things for many years now. Conflating a slower than projected rate of growth with no growth at all is typical of the sorts of things we disagree upon.

The world is so much more complex than even the best models can represent it isn't even funny, and the more simplistic you make the relationship the more room for error you put into the projections you make.

The EIA and IEA are political organizations first and foremost. That doesn't make them inherently evil, but it does color everything they do and say. Everyone has their set of beliefs that color how they view the world, a wise person tries to see issues from not only their own POV but also from other POV positions to try and fill in their own ideological blind spots.

Take the example you gave above. If all you do is look at the last 15 or 20 years it has the ring of truth to it. However if you extend your view back to 1970 and then look at it your POV must necessarily change. The 1973 oil shock and the 1979 oil shock and stagflation period had a sharp impact on world oil consumption. In fact it took about a decade for the 1980 world oil consumption rate to be exceeded. World oil consumption in 1980 was 63,122,000 bbl/d and it was lower than that for every year until 1989 when they rose to 64,978,000 bbl/d. In between those two years oil consumption world wide fell to 58,785,000 bbl/d in 1983 before resuming its climb. EIA numbers,
https://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/ ... &unit=TBPD

So yes, oil demand per year today does not match projections made 15 years ago, but is that in any way actually a significant indicator of anything? Taking the same kind of view from 2005 to 2014 what do you get? In 2005 we consumed 84,588,000 bbl/d. This grew to a peak of 86,788,000 bbl/d in 2007 before the crash. World consumption fell in 2008 and in 2009 bottomed out at 85,021,000 bbl/d. Then in 2010 the world set a new record consumption rate, and it has continued to do so every year right through 2014 when we consumed 91,253,000 bbl/d.

All numbers above from the EIA,
https://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/ ... &unit=TBPD

Now you can bend and twist all you want, however these numbers are not in any sort of real dispute. Not only that but when the economic calamity of 1979 hit the USA it depressed world consumption for almost a decade, when the economic calamity with the USA and EU in 2008 it only pushed world consumption down for two short years. The dynamic has fundamentally changed whether I or you or anyone else likes it or not. The world today burns about 7 MILLION bbl/d more oil every day than we burned in 2005. That is reality. Until we not only burn less oil every year than the year before, but continue to burn less oil year after year for at least a decade will we have very strong evidence we have passed global peak oil. If we go into a 'greatest depression' that will suppress consumption for economic instead of geological reasons so to call peak you have to watch a whole slew of different factors all at the same time and make judgment calls on how much each factor is influencing things.

[ennui2]

MQ and I have disagreed about many things for many years now. Conflating a slower than projected rate of growth with no growth at all is typical of the sorts of things we disagree upon

Which is just another way of saying what I or AdamB did in the other thread. Instead Monte tried to frame it as me being an outlier who didn't "get it" when everyone else did.

If we go into a 'greatest depression' that will suppress consumption for economic instead of geological reasons so to call peak you have to watch a whole slew of different factors all at the same time and make judgment calls on how much each factor is influencing things.

People have been waiting for so long to validate their cassandra syndrome that they are jumping the gun in "calling" it. That's all this amounts to. It's this deep need for personal validation. We'll get there...eventually, and when we do, there won't be any way to confuse the root cause with anything else.

[onlooker]

Okay my bad Tanada, that as usual was a strong argument you made. I did not look at all those numbers and different values over time you posted. In a conciliatory fashion I think we can all then say we are riding some sort of plateau in geologic and economic terms. I will also say that more economic pressures are coming from overall debt in the world economy and the need for growth then probably any other factor and that the more advanced and mature economies are suffering from cost overloads as the book by Joseph Tainter describes when societies become ever more complex. The book being "The Collapse of Complex Societies"

[ROCKMAN]

T - "...oil demand per year today does not match projections made 15 years ago, but is that in any way actually a significant indicator of anything". Yes: a clear indication that folks should ignore predictions made by others who don't know what they don't know: the future. They are certainly free to call such efforts "guesses" but not "predictions" IMHO. Prediction implies some basis of facts. Facts that generally do not exist when it comes to predicting future oil prices or production rates. As you say the system is too dynamic. To model such a system properly requires CORRECTLY assigning values to a complex set of assumption. And even if by blind luck someone correctly assigns values to Assumption 1 thru 15 their prediction still not be worth a cray if their model isn’t constructed properly.

Every prediction has a long list of “ifs” behind it whether they are stated or not.

BTW today consumers are transferring a tad over $1 TRILLION PER YEAR to that "unofficially dead" oil industry. LOL.

[Outcast_Searcher]

The collapse is happening now.

Of course, the hard core short term doomers have been stating this pretty much EVERY month for quite a long time now. Certainly throughout the past decade.

The specific litany of economic reasons given varies, of course, but the mantra is quite constant.

Meanwhile in the real world:

a). The hard core doomer crowd is continuously wrong. It looked like they might be right in 2008-2009, but that turned out to be an episode of stupidity about real estate -- according to any reasonably objective and credible economic source.

b). If people can't afford oil based products with oil at $30, why did humanity afford them well enough at three times the price in the 2010-2014 period, while the global economy continued to grow?

c). If this is collapse instead of an adjustment to much larger oil supplies (which may or may not be a long term phenomenon), then why does economic growth continue? Why are real estate prices generally booming in the US if US citizens can't afford $1.59 gasoline?

Shouting about a growth slow down in China as "doom", when that slow down is consistent with long term projections by real economists, even while ignoring the mirror image growth acceleration in India (also predicted by real economists) might be fun for hard crash doomers, but it doesn't help their credibility outside the echo-chamber.

If the new reality is that the fracking revolution which brought us abundant natural gas, then abundant NGL's, will now bring us abundant oil on a global scale -- then the global economy will actually have a very EASY time affording oil products (even as it continues to destroy the biosphere by burning those products at an accelerated rate).

The jury is still out, but books like "The Domino Effect" make a far better case for oil being (comparably) very affordable than hard crash doomers make for the global economy collapsing because people can't afford oil products.

[shortonoil]

"I'm generally in agreement, excepting that I think Greer tends to discount black swans and inflection points. My take is that he posits that the fractal nature of modern systems means collapse will be distributed and incremental, but I'm not so sure. Many of our inter-reliant systems are gradually becoming hollowed out and fragile, and I've considered that cascading failures are quite possible (likely?) at some point."

The global system has become so interdependent that the failure of one piece of this puzzle could easily bring the whole thing down. Case in point is the global GPS system. It directs and guides the world's entire commerce process. Ships, planes, EMS vehicles, and about anything else that moves. The continuing operation of that system depends on one Belt Line Bandit that operates just outside of DC. The system drifts continuously, and must be calibrated continuously to keep it operational. About 200 engineers work 24 - 7 to keep it running. If the system was left unattended for a week it would become essentially useless. If that occurred almost everything moving on the planet would stop.

With increased complexity the system has become more prone to failure. Very few people have even an inkling of how fragile our entire 21'st century world has become!

[noobtube]

The collapse is happening now.

Of course, the hard core short term doomers have been stating this pretty much EVERY month for quite a long time now. Certainly throughout the past decade.

The specific litany of economic reasons given varies, of course, but the mantra is quite constant.

Meanwhile in the real world:

a). The hard core doomer crowd is continuously wrong. It looked like they might be right in 2008-2009, but that turned out to be an episode of stupidity about real estate -- according to any reasonably objective and credible economic source.

b). If people can't afford oil based products with oil at $30, why did humanity afford them well enough at three times the price in the 2010-2014 period, while the global economy continued to grow?

c). If this is collapse instead of an adjustment to much larger oil supplies (which may or may not be a long term phenomenon), then why does economic growth continue? Why are real estate prices generally booming in the US if US citizens can't afford $1.59 gasoline?

Shouting about a growth slow down in China as "doom", when that slow down is consistent with long term projections by real economists, even while ignoring the mirror image growth acceleration in India (also predicted by real economists) might be fun for hard crash doomers, but it doesn't help their credibility outside the echo-chamber.

If the new reality is that the fracking revolution which brought us abundant natural gas, then abundant NGL's, will now bring us abundant oil on a global scale -- then the global economy will actually have a very EASY time affording oil products (even as it continues to destroy the biosphere by burning those products at an accelerated rate).

The jury is still out, but books like "The Domino Effect" make a far better case for oil being (comparably) very affordable than hard crash doomers make for the global economy collapsing because people can't afford oil products.

Take a look at the Baltic Dry Index.

It does not matter what the price of oil is, if no one can afford it to run BAU.

If the American economy needs $10/bbl oil to continue, and it sells for $15/bbl, watch the American way of life disappear before your eyes.

It's too late to save this sinking ship. Time to get a good seat on the lifeboat (bring a warm coat, some supplies, and maybe a good book).

[ROCKMAN]

tube - "If the American economy needs $10/bbl oil to continue, and it sells for $15/bbl, watch the American way of life disappear before your eyes." Sorry but you lost me there. If the US economy needed $10/bbl oil back when it was selling for $90+/bbl and our "way of life" didn't disappear then why might it disappear at $30/bbl?

[Outcast_Searcher]

tube - "If the American economy needs $10/bbl oil to continue, and it sells for $15/bbl, watch the American way of life disappear before your eyes." Sorry but you lost me there. If the US economy needed $10/bbl oil back when it was selling for $90+/bbl and our "way of life" didn't disappear then why might it disappear at $30/bbl?

+1

I keep asking this (slightly different words -- same concept). I never get what I consider to be CLOSE to a satisfactory answer.

Meanwhile in the US, where the economy is growing, unemployment is shrinking, and wages are growing, the idea that people "can't afford oil products" when, for example, real estate and rental prices are solidly increasing because demand exceeds supply and where hordes of Americans are buying new cars and lots of large gas guzzling SUV's and trucks -- the idea that people "can't afford" gasoline at roughly $1.59 a gallon is silly on its face.

[Outcast_Searcher]

The collapse is happening now.

Of course, the hard core short term doomers have been stating this pretty much EVERY month for quite a long time now. Certainly throughout the past decade.

The specific litany of economic reasons given varies, of course, but the mantra is quite constant.

Meanwhile in the real world:

a). The hard core doomer crowd is continuously wrong. It looked like they might be right in 2008-2009, but that turned out to be an episode of stupidity about real estate -- according to any reasonably objective and credible economic source.

Take a look at the Baltic Dry Index.

It does not matter what the price of oil is, if no one can afford it to run BAU.

Thank you for making my point. Whatever you do, cite one statistic which has been shown over and over again by the non-fast-hard-crash crowd to have good reasons (like too many ships and very low commodity prices) to be low -- and CONSTANTLY ignore those reasons, and pretend like that one statistic is meaningful compared to all the other statistics.

Doing this, you fit right in the echo chamber of economic doom, but well outside the logic and data of mainstream economics.

Unless you want a job at zerohedge, don't count on it buying you much.